1929 Mercedes-Benz S Barker Tourer wins Pebble

The car is a testament to British racer Lord Howe, and the last days of Empire

The winner was not your traditional Pebble Beach Concours winner. It was a 1929 Mercedes-Benz S powered by a 7-liter supercharged straight six, which is a good place to start for a traditional Pebble Beach winner. But from there it went on its own unique and distinct drive.

The winner was Bruce McCaw’s 1929 Mercedes-Benz S Barker Tourer, built with lightweight tourer coachwork by Barker of London using the vision of the British racing driver Lord Howe. Howe was the winner of the Mille Miglia and Le Mans and founder of the British Racing Driver’s Club, among a few other things. His full name was Francis Richard Henry Penn Curzon, 5th Earle Howe, CBE, RD, PC, Viscount Curzon, British naval officer, Member of Parliament.

He sounds like someone you’d want to hang out with, particularly on weekends at the track.

“He was passionate about motorsports,” said McCaw. “Lord Howe gets the credit for this car.”

McCaw said he was serious about authenticity and that the car was restored exactly as Lord Howe had conceived it. That includes the boat-like touches, from the pontoon side pods to the rear deck and boattail rear end. The whole body is aluminum, polished to a glossy finish on the front half while the rest of the body is painted the Howe family color of Curzon Blue. There is a long and very involved story about how they got Curzon Blue that has to do with a lady relative who wore a dress in India that had a color the shade of a peacock’s eye, if we got any of the story right as it was told to us by the car’s restorer and former owner Charles Bronson there on the ramp at Pebble. The lady, Bronson said, made an entrance in the dress riding atop an elephant the tusks of which were adorned with golden candelabras. We tell you this only to give you a sense of the intricate detail involved in the car’s creation. And it was intricate.

Bruce McCaw purchased the car “in pretty good shape” and first showed it “three or four years ago” in Pebble’s unrestored class. The team then went to town, restoring it to its former glory and finishing the job up only one week before the Concours. The car completed the 70-mile The Tour on Thursday with only three test miles under its belt, but it did complete it.

Woo hoo!

As you may know, there are three McCaw brothers, Bruce, Craig and John, all three of whom have shown cars at Pebble. In fact, second to Bruce McCaw’s car this year was the 1957 Ferrari 315 S Scaglietti Spyder of brother John (with wife Gwen). What are the chances?